


i'll make an hourglass from my fingers

by greekdemigod



Series: Roisa Fic Week Summer 2017 [4]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Roisa Fic Week Summer 2017, post 3x20, set four years after the season three finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 02:01:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11499429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: Things have changed when Rose finally gets out of prison.[Time.]





	i'll make an hourglass from my fingers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [likevel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/likevel/gifts).



> Somehow this was the easiest thing I've written all week, although usually I struggle with canon a lot. Go figure.
> 
> Dedicated to Anna, since a lot of this plot was originally meant to be written for a birthday fic for her. And also because she's just a really amazing person.

Prison had a weird effect on her notion of time. It had passed, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly, but it always had. The four years had seemed to drag on, though, while she waited. Bided her time. Watched the clock tick down on her sentence. Needing so desperately to get back to her life and her love.

Being incarcerated had not been a life, but it was hard to describe what it _had_ been. A weird limbo, or a purgatory. Not quite one thing or another, but something in the middle.

Rose could have spent those four years in whichever way pleased her; she would not have been the only one to try and better herself in that time, utilize the resources granted to them no matter how few of them there were; she would not have been the only one to do nothing at all and just lethargically wait it out.

There, too, she had been something in between. She had survived, coasting through it with a few allies, no enemies (she _was_ learning), catching up on all the reading she hadn’t been able to do during her active years of crime lording.

But mostly, it had been to fill her days. At the end of the day, she hadn’t made any presumptions that this was her life now and she had to make the best of it, try to make it enjoyable.

No, she would not do that. That would make a mockery of the _real_ life she had, out there, with Luisa. Just waiting for her to get back to it. To finally be free.

Freedom is still the best taste in the world, Rose discovers now that she _is_ finally free again. Being freed of all her past crimes now, deemed rehabilitated by the law, able to stop running and hiding... it’s a close second.

Luisa is there to pick her up, of course. She looks tired, Rose can tell from a distance, but she is beaming a smile to rival the sun and waves so excitedly that she picks up her pace from a stroll to a jog to get to Luisa faster.

She stands corrected: Luisa’s kiss, without any guards watching and breaking them up, _that_ ’s the best taste in the world. Sue her for reveling in it, drawing it out until Luisa pushes gently against her shoulders—actually, don’t sue her, she doesn’t want to go to prison again. To not have this? Never again.

There’s a feint blush on Luisa’s cheeks and a glint in her eyes that Rose gets to take in before the smaller woman leans against her, head against her chest, thin arms wrapping tight around her. She’s so soft and warm, so exactly what she needs right now. Rose sets her head on top of Luisa’s and holds onto her girlfriend, and vows that she’ll never be gone that long again.

(Either through never relapsing back into crime or through never getting caught, who knows?)

“What would you like to do? I have about an hour before I have this meeting with—”

“What?” Rose frowns as the images she’d built in her mind of their first day together shatter. “What do you mean, you have _an hour_?”

At least Luisa has the decency to look guilty about that—or is that pull at her mouth a sign of annoyance? A one-hour visit every four weeks might have corroded her ability to read Luisa, but she still _knows_ her, doesn’t she? Why would she be _annoyed_?

“I told you all about it the last time I visited. The resort Petra and I are trying to buy? The one in Tampa?”

“Right.” Rose remembers that—actually, she mostly remembers how _excited_ Luisa was while talking about it, but she was never too fond of stories from Luisa’s life without her, so some of the details have slipped entirely from her mind. “Okay, well, do you have time for me after that, then?”

“Yeah, I think so! Maybe you could come to dinner with us. You’ll like Petra’s girlfriend, she’s really cool.”

Rose has to bite back her anger, but her voice still sounds laced with it when she says, “Did you try to make time for me at all?”

And now Luisa _definitely_ looks annoyed. Her shoulders tense and she takes a small step back, not far away, but still _too far away_. “My whole weekend’s free for you, but I can’t just drop _everything_ for you.” The _‘not anymore’_ might as well have been added, because Rose can tell it sticks in the back of Luisa’s throat, wanting to be said.

Fighting is not what she wants to do her first day out of prison, so for once, Rose concedes an argument she thinks she would probably win. “Okay. Can you just take me to the hotel, then?”

“Of course.” Normally, _before_ , a nickname would’ve been tacked on there, and its absence speaks volumes.

* * *

Despite the blossoming insecurity about the current state of their relationship, whether they’re still in the same place about it, Rose enjoys her first shower she gets to take in a bathroom that is completely clean and with a door she gets to lock. The space is quiet beyond the confines of the cabin; no noisy women, no shouts for her to hurry up. She has her pick of shampoos and soaps that seem luxurious after the commissary-bought ones she’s had to use for years.

It’s a little too late for her hair, she’ll need to get that cut, and her skin will need a few weeks to get back to being soft, but it is still cathartic.

When she steps out into the steam-fogged bathroom after and wraps herself in a fluffy, white towel, her thoughts go right back to Luisa though. They had an uncomfortable ride back, and then an even more uncomfortable time of it being at the Marbella.

They spent only a short period in the room, just the two of them. But even there something felt off—like Luisa just couldn’t wait to get gone.

And Rose should respect that. She _will_ respect that. Her girlfriend has become quite the savvy entrepreneur, who has built the single hotel she has inherited back into a significant _hotel group_ the likes of which her father, who had been a great businessman despite all that he lacked as a person, would be proud.

A Luisa with a purpose is forever more preferable to a Luisa without one, lethargic, sad, helpless.

But does she have to be so _busy_ with it?

Rose always made time for her when she was the one having meetings and making deals and raking in money. Well, sometimes. Often enough. And they weren’t even really together back then.

Huffing, she drops her towel and strides into the room, only to feel infinitely bad about how ungrateful her thoughts have become when she notices half of Luisa’s closet is dedicated to _her_ clothes. Some of her old stuff she recognizes, and things that have obviously been bought new.

She puts on one of her old skirts first, but it sits loose around her waist, so she exchanges it for a new dress that fits a lot tighter.

Since Luisa won’t be back for another few hours and her parole officer told her she was free to go wherever she pleased as long as she stayed within the state of Miami for the first half year, she might as well go for that haircut now.

Luisa left her a credit card to use—another thing she really ought to just be _grateful_ for.

Her anger really has no right to be there, but although she tries to keep her spirits up, it keeps gnawing at her. This isn’t what she expected life to be like once she got on the outside; she expected the always being together and being each other’s priority back when Rose had been hiding from the law.

And the root of it all is simple, something she figures out sitting in the hairdresser’s chair asking for a fresh cut and something to revitalize the red in her hair.

She is insecure.

Here is the one person she has ever cared about, so deeply that it has always been terrifying. The one person she has sacrificed _everything_ for, given up her crime empire, all for a normal life.

What if Luisa has moved on? Time has practically stood still for Rose, the last day before being arrested the only one that matters, but for Luisa it obviously hasn’t. What if they’ve grown too far apart and there is no bridging the gap? What if there is no more place for Rose in this new life Luisa has built?

What if, what if, what if.

It leaves her feeling so hollowed-out and exhausted that when she gets back to Luisa’s presidential suite, all Rose can do is go to sleep.

* * *

She wakes from a dream that made her feel less-rested than before when Luisa returns. Her face is a mask of concern and guilt, her eyes gentle but grief-stricken, her bottom lip jutting out just a little. “I’m sorry,” she whispers and presses her mouth to Rose’s forehead. “I _should_ have cleared out today for you.”

Rose props herself up on her arm and cups Luisa’s cheek, to steady the both of them, to get to look at her. “I understand. Your job’s very demanding, I’ve been there.”

Luisa sighs as she brings her hand up to clasp over Rose’s and keep holding it to her cheek. “Can I show you something?”

“What about your dinner with Petra?”

“We can do that another time. She’s probably sick of my company after all these years of being my right hand.”

Rose puts on a light jacket at Luisa’s urging and follows along, their hands intertwined between them, and this at last feels like it ought to. In a world that no longer makes sense, where paranoia and insecurity are her first reactions, Rose is glad to know their hands clasped together still feels like comfort and safety and union.

They walk down the pier, accompanied by the noises the Miami beach has always brought along, that of waves lapping onto the shore and dozens of people. Some buildings have changed since she last walked here, indie stores finally overtaken by big brands, but others haven’t. Mostly she has eyes for Luisa.

“This is why I still do it.” They stop in front of a non-descript white building that does not mean anything to her until it suddenly means everything; the _Mia Alver Women’s Clinic_. This is what Luisa talked about the most, something that was a dream for two years and then slowly, with Petra’s urging, became a reality.

A free clinic for women, in a time unkind to minority groups, because at her core, Luisa wants to do _good_.

“Running a big business is not what gives me joy. It’s using the profits there to support the people that need it...” The smile she wears is so uncharacteristically proud of herself, so _happy_ , that Rose can’t believe she could imagine any ill-will in this person. Luisa has no capacity for ill-will unless it is really, really, _really_ warranted (see: Rafael Solano). “We bought the resort, and it’s going to allow a lot of low-income families to finally be able to take their kids on a vacation. That’s what Petra and I want to achieve, anyway. She grew up poor, so she gets it, and I think it’s... Why are you looking at me like that?”

Rose tugs Luisa closer and looks at her, really looks at her, this most wonderful woman that _did_ wait for her. Waiting around for her is what she has been doing for so long.

“I just really love you, you know that?”

Her smile brightens, something she didn’t think possible at all. “I love you too.”

“And we’ll figure it out. Right?”

“Yeah, we’ll figure it out. We just need some time to do that.”

Rose smiles, because she knows that that’s what they have. The rest of forever.

All the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
